Mindfulness for Skin Picking with Christina Pearson

Here I’ve included three video excerpts from a full interview I did recently with Christina Pearson, the visionary who 25 years ago started the Trichotillomania Learning Center (now the TLC Foundation for BFRBs) and more recently the Heart and Soul Academy for BFRBs, where she teaches mindfulness-based impulse reduction courses for those struggling with body-focused repetitive picking, pulling or biting behaviors.

The full video, close to one hour in length, is part of the bonus content for my online course. The full video includes Christina teaching about how to begin to cultivate mindful awareness, which she credits for her more than two decades of recovery from both hair pulling and skin picking.

In the first video below, Christina tells us about when she developed these behaviors and when she decided to first talk about it. She speaks of learning how many others did the same thing and tells us of the surprising experience of being asked to talk about it on a radio show and what came out of that.

In the second short video Christina talks about how picking and biting behaviors are natural sometimes necessary behaviors and can be important defense mechanisms.

In the third video, my favorite, Christina explains how she began observing herself picking and pulling, increasing her mindful awareness and noticing her urges. As she looked more closely, time would seem to expand and she could notice the feeling before and during, and flow it out. Watch this one again and again, but warning if you are sensitive to language: there’s a “bad word” in here.

I hope you enjoyed learning from Christina. Visit heartandsoulacademy.org to get on her mailing list and learn more about her mindfulness courses and Colorado retreat, which I will be teaching at again.

Questions or comments? Add yours below.

And again, if you want access to the full-length video of our entire conversation, and would love a step-by-step systematic approach to stopping skin picking on your own, you’ll want to purchase my course Break Free From Skin Picking.

My clients say they feel more comfortable working with me than with anyone they have tried (unsuccessfully) to work with in the past. I look forward to helping you, too, find the freedom to finally stop.